Page 32 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 32
“Don’t worry, lass.”
Ged said the words, but I couldn’t take his advice. I liked Cloud Raker. The dragon turned towards us when we approached and, somehow, I felt a wave of warmth coming from the dragon that was not just heat. Being around him felt… comforting. So why were my muscles locked tight as I got on the saddle? Why did I stiffen when Ged slotted himself in behind me? What the hell was I feeling as yet another man pressed his body against mine? I was as fluttery as a maid at her coming-out ball, all male attention suddenly taking on a different meaning. But he simply put his hand on my hip to steady me as he moved us on the saddle until he was happy with the position.
“Just put your feet in here.” He pointed to several small pockets on the side of the saddle and sure enough, when I pushed them in, I felt instantly more comfortable.
“These are stirrups?” I asked.
“Of a sort. This is a training saddle. You were supposed to… Never mind. Now, I’m going to tighten these straps around your calf, right behind the knee. Helps you hold the correct position without straining to grip Cloudy’s neck the whole time.”
“Oh, thank the gods…” Probably not what I should’ve been sighing as a man gripped my leg, but propriety be damned.
“I bet you're tighter than a nun’s… You must be bloody tense, riding with the prince. He’s not… That wasn’t what we had planned. Get up to the keep roof early next time. We’ll have you strapped in and secured before he even arrives and it’ll be too much hassle to prise you away from us. We’ll look after you, Pip.”
Having shaved my head, I had become so much more aware of the back of my neck. Air played across it, making me shiver, and I realised that it was Ged’s hot breath. Some strange part of me had me lengthening my spine, so that my hips pressed back slightly, so that my neck became longer and that shift in angle was rewarded as he leaned forward. His head fitted itself to the curve of my neck as he reached over and wrapped a rope around each of my arms.
“You need time to build your riding muscles, just like everyone else did. I cried like a fucking baby when I got off Cloudy’s back the first time. My knackers felt like they were on fire.”
Knackers… knackers… I blinked when I remembered what that meant.
“Cloudy set fire to your testicles?” I asked in alarm.
“Nah, just felt like he had. Hard saddle.” He wiggled around a bit. “Met soft squishy nuts. Took time to toughen them up, along with everything else. Now, Cloudy here is going to run as fast as he can towards the edge of this cliff in a minute.”
I stiffened and Glimmer shifted within my jacket as a result. Ged picked that up and rubbed a hand up and down my spine.
“He needs momentum, lift and a fuck load of muscles to get him air bound, but he can do it, can’t you, mate?” The dragon let out a low rumble. “He’s done it a million times before and will do it right up until the end of his days. He can carry a little slip of a thing like you across the waves.”
“Little?” That was one of the first times anyone had described me as that since I’d reached womanhood.
“To me you are. Now, are you ready?”
Ged’s approach couldn’t have been more different to Draven’s and I was glad for it. Right before this, I’d been determined to walk all the way home, even if it took me months to do so. But now? I eyed the waves beyond and then nodded.
“Good lass. C’mon then, you great lunk! Let’s show her ladyship what you’re made of.”
Cloud Raker let out a great bellow, moving just as Ged had described, but knowing that intellectually still wasn’t enough to stop the fear rising. I was human and humans did not fling ourselves off cliffs, ever, if we wanted to live. And with the chance of an independent life in front of me, I badly wanted to live. But when Glimmer poked her head out, she let out a thin creel of excitement, not fear.
This was her birthright, a foreshadowing of what was to come. It would be her, with me on her back, racing towards a cliff or the edge of an outcropping; her claws that slammed down into the raw rock, making it tremble as she passed. And it would be her wings that flapped out like sails, just like Cloudy’s did now.
“How we doing, Pip?” Ged asked me, trying for calm and failing. The excitement was infectious.
“Good,” I piped up, my tone shaky, but there was exhilaration there. Cloudy roared as if in response to that validation. Glimmer twittered out a steady stream of sounds, no doubt something important to a dragon, but the meaning was lost on us.
“That’s what I want to hear. Now, while those bastards are chasing up those ships, we’re going to have a little lesson. See how they’re flying?” The four dragons flew in formation, Darkspire at the front, then Brom’s dragon Obsidian followed by the other two. “They do that for a reason. Reduces the impact of drag. That’s what we call the resistance of the air.”
I let out a little yip when one of his hands went out and trailed through the breeze. I watched it waver, the weight of the wind seeming to push it backwards.
“The less resistance, the more secure you’ll feel in the saddle. Try it out.”
Gods, this was so different. Ged explained everything with utter confidence and that allowed me the space to do as he said. I straightened upwards slightly and it felt like a big hand shoved at my chest, pressing me against Ged’s.
“Whoa, it packs a punch, doesn’t it?” I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. “So work with the wind. It comes rushing up and over Cloudy’s big noggin…” The dragon bellowed his response to that. “And comes slamming into you. Be a reed, not a wall. Bend with it.”
At first I thought he meant backwards, but no. Draven had taught me a lesson, even if it was an unwelcome one. I lowered my body so it was as flush with Cloudy’s spine as it could be, but for a crucial difference. I focussed on caging Glimmer in the space between me and the saddle, holding myself firm so that when Ged settled around me, he wasn’t crushing my dragon. Glimmer clawed her way partially out of my jacket, her head in line with the big male dragon’s. She felt like she was flying, not suffocating this time, which helped settle me.
“Gods, you smell a lot better than the cadets I’ve trained,” Ged muttered. “Feel a damn sight better too.”
But before I could formulate a reply, though what my response to that might be, I had no idea, he continued the lesson.
“To fly, to be a rider, not just a sack of meal tossed on a dragon’s back…” I flushed, remembering Draven’s words, “...you need to learn to move with your beast. I’m going to perform a few manoeuvres and show you how to do that. The first one is called banking. We use it to turn a dragon. Cloudy’s going to drop his right wing down and start by tilting his body to the right.”
“Right.”
I didn’t want to say that, remembering what it’d been like when Darkspire had done just that. I wanted to say no, take me back, get me off this dragon.
“When he does, we need to lean into it. It feels counterintuitive and believe me when I say it’s not. The wind has a weight to it. You felt that. You have to trust that the dragon, can work with the wind to keep you up. That’s what learning to ride is about: trust.”
He got to the core of it, the way Ged always seemed to. He didn’t need fancy words or subtexts to speak for him. He spoke his truth. But my own bubbled up in response, wanting to stop him, to show him, to make clear just how little trust I had. Every experience I’d had in the past year or so told me that I needed to be damn careful about giving that to anyone ever again.
Except I had.
I felt Glimmer’s pleasure radiating out, pouring like golden light into me. A light that seemed to banish all the shadows inside me and let me do this. Cloud Raker banked to the right, just as Ged said he would and, while I wrapped my hands tighter in the ropes, I moved with him, leaning into the turn.
“That’s it, lass!” Ged told me as we swung around at what felt like lightning speed. And when the dragon straightened up, I did too, still holding my body low so the wind didn’t smash so hard into us, and that’s when I saw them.
Several tall ships rode the waves, and around them swarmed the other dragons, like wolves coming in for the kill.
“Might be merchants,” Ged told me. “The boys’ll work it out.”
We approached much more slowly, and were treated to a panoramic view of the proceedings. Far enough away to see several flashes of cannon fire, something that drew a whoop from Ged.
“Looks like more bloody outlanders trying to get a foothold in Nevermere. Pirates hold their nerve better, waiting until we’re almost on top of them to shoot.”
He seemed so gleeful about the whole thing, unconcerned for the welfare of his wing mates, and in a moment I realised why. Glacier swept past shooting a stream of icy breath that froze the seas around the ships, bringing them to a stop. Obsidian vomited great gouts of fire across one ship as Wraith sent sheets of cracking lightning across the sails, the mast and the decks all catching alight. Then Darkspire moved in. I didn’t understand his skill at first, because when he opened his mouth, a great green cloud oozed out.
“Acid,” Ged told me. “It’ll melt the ships, the sails, everything.”
“Including the crew…”
He heard the horror in my voice and reached over to squeeze my hand.
“Has to be done, love. Nevermere is a small island in comparison to the mainland. There’s plenty tempted to come over and take what’s ours. The dragons are all that stop that.”
But as if sensing my discomfort, he turned Cloudy around and started us winging our way back to the shore.